Uncategorized
- Environment
Poisonings linked to e-cigarettes
A federal survey finds electronic cigarettes and the chemicals they burn are an increasing cause of reports of harm made to poison-control centers. Young children are often the victims.
- Health & Medicine
The nose knows a trillion scents
There's a long-standing claim that people can identify 10,000 different odors. But a new study suggests that people can actually identify at least 10,000 times that many scents.
- Brain
Understanding Autism
Genetics appears to play some role in this disorder, which affects more than one percent of all Americans.
- Brain
Getting a head start on autism
Early diagnosis followed by early treatment may reduce autism’s impact on kids — and help them to communicate better.
- Animals
Kangaroos have ‘green’ farts
The farts and belches of these animals contain less methane than do those from other big grass grazers. Microbes in their digestive tract appear to explain the ‘roos lower production of this greenhouse gas, a new study finds.
- Brain
Autism unlocked
Experts are learning how to diagnose this brain disorder in infancy. That may be early enough to allow nerve cells in the brain to develop new connections — ones that form detours around autism-affected areas.
- Fossils
Lobster’s ancient ‘cousin’ was gentle giant
Some 500 million years ago, this top predator would have likely netted its meals with long bristly limbs.
- Planets
Surprising rings circle comet-asteroid hybrid
It’s too small to be a planet. Yet this planet wannabe still resembles Saturn-like giants. It’s the smallest solar system inhabitant to, like them, host rings of orbiting ice.
- Fossils
Scary ‘chicken’ roamed Earth with T. rex
Scientists have just pieced together evidence of a weird new dinosaur that sported sharp claws, feathers and a beak. And it just may have been one of the last dinos to roam Earth about 67 million years ago.
- Animals
Pythons seem to have an internal compass
The giant, Burmese pythons living in Florida’s Everglades like their adopted home. And new research shows they can find their way back to it if people try to move them somewhere else. Not all snakes will do this.
- Earth
The quake that shook up geology
North America’s biggest earthquake struck 50 years ago. Here’s what science has learned about Earth since the 1964 Great Alaskan Earthquake.
- Earth
Explainer: Telling a tsunami from a seiche
Waves that hit coastlines with ferocious power, tsunamis are one of the planet’s most devastating forces of nature. And seiches: They’re tsunamis little, but still potentially deadly, cousins.
